Page 2 of The Witch They Fear

There's a metal tray on the intake desk. On the tray: a device. Not a syringe—something closer to a piercing gun, matte black, clinical, with a short barrel and a trigger mechanism. Loaded into the tip is a piece of tech the size of a grain of rice. Dull silver. Faintly humming.

I stare at it.

"Marion."

"I know." Her voice is steady now. Nurse-steady. The warmth is still there, underneath, but she's doing her job and her job has never been kind. "I know what it is. I'm sorry. It has to go in before you leave the building."

The fail-safe.

I've read my file. I know what they approved.

A device—part tech, part enchantment—implanted at the base of the skull, keyed to a remote operator who can activate it if I lose control. When triggered, it suppresses my magic instantly and completely.

Emergency shutdown. A kill switch for the weapon they've decided I am.

They told me about it during my exit briefing. The council diplomat—Balcour, starched collar, manicured hands, the kind of man who irons his pocket squares—sat across from me and explained it in the same tone you'd use to review a lease agreement. Standard safety protocol. A precaution. For everyone's protection. He said everyone's but he meant from you. He didn't look at me once during the entire briefing. Addressed his notes, addressed the file, addressed the wall behind my head. I was the subject matter, not a participant. He was a vampire—because of course he was. They always are. Every diplomat, every inspector, every person who's had a say in whether I live sedated or live at all.

I look at Marion. At the gun. At her hands, which are not shaking because she is a professional and she has done hard things before.

"The hug," I say. My voice comes out flat. Good. I want it flat. "Was that goodbye, or sorry-I'm-about-to-put-this-thing-in-you?"

Something crosses her face. Pain, real pain—the kind that deepens the lines around her mouth and makes the birthmark on her wrist disappear into the clench of her fist.

"Both," she says. "Calypso, it was both."

And I believe her. That's what makes it worse. The tenderness was real. The gun is also real. These two things live in the same woman, in the same hands, and I'm not allowed to have one without the other.

I sit down. I pull my hair off my neck and let out a deep breath.

"Do it."

The barrel is cold against the knob of my spine. Marion's fingers steady it—one hand on the gun, one hand on the back of my head, firm and clinical and nothing like the way she held me thirty seconds ago.

A click. A punch of pressure—sharp, bright, wrong—and I feel it go in. Not deep. Just under the skin. But the wrongness isn't the pain. The wrongness is what comes after: a hum that starts at the entry point and spreads outward like a crack through ice, tracing the line of my spine, mapping the architecture of my nervous system with cold, mechanical patience.

It reaches the place behind my sternum where my magic lives and wraps around it. Doesn't squeeze. Doesn't suppress. Just holds. A hand closing around a throat without pressing down.

The dampeners are fog. The fail-safe is a fist. Resting. Patient. Waiting for someone to tell it to squeeze.

Marion sets the gun down and presses a small bandage over the site. Her fingers are gentle.

"It's dormant until it's keyed to your training supervisor," she says. "You won't feel it activate until—"

"Until someone pushes the button." I stand up. The room tilts for a half-second—the hum is still mapping me, finding the edges of what it will need to shut down—and then steadies.

She grabs my arm. Not nurse-grip. Real grip. Her eyes are fierce and frightened at the same time.

"Listen to me. This place you're going—it wasn't built for people like you. The ones who run it, the ones who fund it, they're not on your side." Her voice drops. "Be smart. Learn the rules before you break them. And when someone pushes you—because they will—you decide if the fight is worth the cost before you swing."

Coming from anyone else, I'd roll my eyes. But Marion is human. She has no power in this world except the kind that comes from paying attention, and she's been paying attention for twenty-two years.

"Thank you, Marion. Seriously."

"You're stronger than they think," she says. Quiet. Like she doesn't want the walls to hear.

I'm exactly as strong as they think. That's the problem.

I don't say it. I pick up my duffel and walk toward the exit of the building I've lived in since I was thirteen years old.